Great Britain and the American Civil War

by Ephraim Douglass Adams

This view discredits the acumen of the American Secretary of State and it does not completely satisfy the third historian to examine the incident in detail. Nor does he agree on the basis of British policy. Charles Francis Adams, in his "Life" of his father, writing in 1899, followed in the main the view of his brother, Henry Adams. But in 1912 he reviewed the negotiation at great length with different conclusions[266]. His thesis is that the Declaration of Paris negotiation was an essential part of Seward's "foreign war policy," in that in case a treaty was signed with Great Britain and France and then those Powers refused to aid in the suppression of Southern privateering, or at least permitted them access to British and French ports, a good ground of complaint leading to war would be established. This was the ultimate ulterior purpose in Seward's mind; the negotiation was but a method of fixing a quarrel on some foreign Power in case the United States should seek, as Seward desired, a cementing of the rift at home by a foreign war.

In the details of the negotiation C.F. Adams agrees with Bancroft, but with this new interpretation. The opening misunderstanding he ascribed, as did Lyons, to the simple fact that Seward "had refused to see the despatch" in which Russell's proposals were made[267]. Seward's instructions of July 6, after the misunderstanding was made clear to him, pushing the negotiation, were drawn when he was "still riding a very high horse--the No. 10 charger, in fact, he had mounted on the 21st of the previous May[268]," and this warlike charger he continued to ride until the sobering Northern defeat at Bull Run, July 21, put an end to his folly. If that battle had been a Northern victory he would have gone on with his project. Now, with the end of a period of brain-storm and the emergence of sanity in foreign policy, "Secretary Seward in due time (September 7) pronounced the proposed reservation [by Russell] quite 'inadmissible.' And here the curtain fell on this somewhat prolonged and not altogether creditable diplomatic farce[269]."

Incidentally C.F. Adams examined also British action and intention. Lyons is wholly exonerated. "Of him it may be fairly said that his course throughout seems to furnish no ground for criticism[270]." And Lyons is quoted as having understood, in the end, the real purpose of Seward's policy in seeking embroilment with Europe. He wrote to Russell on December 6 upon the American publication of despatches, accompanying the President's annual message: "Little doubt can remain, after reading the papers, that the accession was offered solely with the view to the effect it would have on the privateering operations of the Southern States; and that a refusal on the part of England and France, after having accepted the accession, to treat the Southern privateers as pirates, would have been made a serious grievance, if not a ground of quarrel[271]...." As to Russell, combating Henry Adams' view, it is asserted that it was the great good fortune of the United States that the British Foreign Secretary, having declared a policy of neutrality, was not to be driven from its honest application by irritations, nor seduced into a position where the continuation of that policy would be difficult.

Before entering upon an account of the bearing of the newly available British materials on the negotiation--materials which will in themselves offer sufficient comment on the theories of Henry Adams, and in less degree of Bancroft--it is best to note here the fallacy in C.F. Adams' main thesis. If the analysis given in the preceding chapter of the initiation and duration of Seward's "foreign war policy" is correct, then the Declaration of Paris negotiation had no essential relation whatever to that policy. The instructions to Adams were sent to eight other Ministers. Is it conceivable that Seward desired a war with the whole maritime world? The date, April 24, antedates any deliberate proposal of a foreign war, whatever he may have been brooding, and in fact stamps the offer as part of that friendly policy toward Europe which Lincoln had insisted upon. Seward's frenzy for a foreign war did not come to a head until the news had been received of England's determination to recognize Southern belligerency. This was in the second week of May and on the twenty-first Despatch No. 10 marked the decline, not the beginning, of a belligerent policy, and by the President's orders. By May 24 probably, by the twenty-seventh certainly, Seward had yielded and was rapidly beginning to turn to expressions of friendship[272]. Yet it was only on May 18 that Russell's first instructions to Lyons were sent, and not until late in June that the "misunderstanding" cleared away, instructions were despatched by Seward to push the Declaration of Paris negotiations at London and Paris. The battle of Bull Run had nothing to do with a new policy. Thus chronology forbids the inclusion of this negotiation, either in its inception, progress, or conclusion, as an agency intended to make possible, on just grounds, a foreign war.

A mere chronological examination of documents, both printed and in archives, permits a clearer view of British policy on the Declaration of Paris. Recalling the facts of the American situation known in London it will be remembered that on May 1 the British Government and Parliament became aware that a civil war was inevitable and that the South planned to issue privateers. On that day Russell asked the Admiralty to reinforce the British fleet in West Indian waters that British commerce might be adequately protected. Five days later, May 6, he announced in the Commons that Great Britain must be strictly neutral, and that a policy of close harmony with France was being matured; and on this day he proposed through Cowley, in Paris, that Great Britain and France each ask both the contending parties in America to abide by the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris[273]. If there was ulterior motive here it does not appear in any despatch either then or later, passing between any of the British diplomats concerned--Russell, Cowley, and Lyons. The plain fact was that the United States was not an adherent to the Declaration, that the South had announced privateering, and the North a blockade, and that the only portions of the Declaration in regard to which the belligerents had as yet made no statement were the second and third articles.

It was, indeed, an anxious time for the British Government. On May 9 Forster asked in the Commons what would be the Government's attitude toward a British subject serving on a Southern privateer[274]. The next day in the Lords there occurred a debate the general burden of which was that privateering was in fact piracy, but that under the conditions of the American previous stand, it could not be treated as such[275]. Both in the Commons and the Lords speakers were referred to the forthcoming Proclamation of Neutrality, but the uncertainty developed in both debates is very probably reflected in the new despatch now sent to Cowley, on May 11[276]. By that despatch France was asked to send an instruction to Mercier in Washington similar to a draft instruction intended for Lyons, a copy of which was enclosed to Cowley, the object being to secure from the American belligerents adherence to all the articles, privateering included, of the Declaration of Paris[277].

Whatever Russell's purpose in thus altering his original suggestion, it met with a prompt check from France. On May 9 Thouvenel had agreed heartily to the proposal of May 6, adding the practical advice that the best method of approach to the Confederacy would be through the consuls in the South[278]. Now, on May 13, Russell was informed that Thouvenel feared that England and France would get into serious trouble if the North agreed to accede on privateering and the South did not. Cowley reported that he had argued with Thouvenel that privateers were pirates and ought to be treated as such, but that Thouvenel refused to do more than instruct Mercier on the second and third articles[279]. For the moment Russell appears to have yielded easily to this French advice. On May 13 he had that interview with the Southern commissioners in which he mentioned a communication about to be made to the South[280]; and on May 15 the London Times, presumably reflecting governmental decision, in commenting on the Proclamation of Neutrality, developed at some length the idea that British citizens, if they served on Southern privateers, could claim no protection from Great Britain if the North chose to treat them as pirates. May 16, Cowley reported that Thouvenel had written Mercier in the terms of Russell's draft to Lyons of the eleventh, but omitting the part about privateering[281], and on this same day Russell sent to Cowley a copy of a new draft of instructions to Lyons, seemingly in exact accord with the French idea[282]. On the seventeenth, Cowley reported this as highly satisfactory to Thouvenel[283]. Finally on May 18 the completed instruction was despatched.

It was on this same day, May 18, that Adams had his first interview with Russell. All that had been planned by Great Britain and France had been based on their estimate of the necessity of the situation. They had no knowledge of Seward's instructions of April 24. When therefore Adams, toward the conclusion of his interview, stated his authority to negotiate a convention, he undoubtedly took Russell by surprise. So far as he was concerned a suggestion to the North, the result of an agreement made with France after some discussion and delay, was in fact completed, and the draft finally drawn two days before, on the sixteenth. Even if not actually sent, as Henry Adams thinks, it was a completed agreement. Russell might well speak of it as an instruction already given to Lyons. Moreover there were two points in Adams' conversation of the eighteenth likely to give Russell cause for thought. The first was Adams' protest against the British recognition of a status of belligerency. If the North felt so earnestly about this, had it been wise to instruct Lyons to make an approach to the South? This required consideration. And in the second place did not Adams' offer again open up the prospect of somehow getting from the North at least a formal and permanent renunciation of privateering?

For if an examination is made of Russell's instruction to Lyons of May 18 it appears that he had not, after all, dropped that reference to privateering which Thouvenel had omitted in his own instructions to Mercier. Adams understood Russell to have said that he "had already transmitted authority [to Lyons] to assent to any modification of the only point in issue which the Government of the United States might prefer. On that matter he believed that there would be no difficulty whatever[284]." This clearly referred to privateering. Russell's instructions to Lyons took up the points of the Declaration of Paris in reverse order. That on blockades was now generally accepted by all nations. The principle of the third article had "long been recognized as law, both in Great Britain and in the United States." The second article, "sanctioned by the United States in the earliest period of the history of their independence," had been opposed, formerly, by Great Britain, but having acquiesced in the Declaration of 1856, "she means to adhere to the principle she then adopted." Thus briefly stating his confidence that the United States would agree on three of the articles, Russell explained at length his views as to privateering in the American crisis.